The SJW-convergence aware crowd might be interested in Matt Chandler’s vision for the Acts29 Network since he took control. Here are the values:

1. Plant Churches that Plant Churches
2. Be Known for Holiness and Humility3. Become a Radically Diverse Crowd
4. Be Serious about Evangelism and Conversions

It’s not an irony that Chandler stands and moves like a woman. It coincides.

I wasn’t aware of this, but this is indeed Chandler’s Hope #3 for Acts 29:

My third hope for Acts 29 is that we might boldly and unapologetically become a radically diverse crowd over the next few years.

Why? Ethnic harmony/diversity is core to being explicitly Christian.

This is of course what SJW entryists always do; they re-purpose the organization towards “diversity” and claim this is essential to achieving the organization’s original mission. In this case, harmony becomes diversity, and university ethnic studies values predictably start supplanting the original mission.

Make no mistake, this isn’t about harmony, it is about the racial grievance industry and white privilege. During the Ferguson riots in November 2014, Acts 29 Vice President and The Gospel Coalition (TGC) Council Member Darrin Patrick* published an article at TGC titled How Should You Respond to Ferguson. The article opens with:

We learned last night that Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown, was not indicted by the grand jury. Multiple businesses have been looted and burned, and our city—St. Louis—is trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and move forward. Leading up to the grand jury decision, we wanted to prepare our church, regardless of the verdict, to rightly respond to the issues this case has unearthed.

Over the last few months, the elders and other leaders at The Journey have been encouraging our church and the wider community to let their guard down and step into hard conversations about justice, privilege, and race.

What follows is a standard issue SJW discussion about racist police and white privilege. The language and frame of mind are exactly what you would find in the African American Studies department at your local university, and this is no accident. One of the experts on the panel is introduced as:

Sabrine:

multi racial background

majored in African American Studies at Wash Univ.

speaks and leads workshops on diversity training

You can see Sabrine’s introduction in the video embedded below. Drag the cursor to the beginning if you want to see the whole thing:

Pastor Chandler isn’t just pushing SJW racial theory as core to being a Christian. He is also slightly more subtly doing the same with feminist theory as well. In his sermon Man’s Purpose Chandler quotes 1 Tim 3 on the qualifications of elders, and then explains what this means (emphasis mine):

Two sentences. Where an all-male eldership practices authority in the church that is harsh and uncaring, then they are outside the bounds of the beautiful design of God and outside the boundaries of Scripture. Where an all-male eldership does not create and nurture lanes for the flourishing of women in their gifts, they are outside the bounds of God’s beautiful design and outside the bounds of Scripture.

Once again, male headship is the unique leadership of the man in the work of establishing order for human flourishing, and Christ is our model. That’s work. We are to cultivate in the home. We are to cultivate in the church.

This is not what 1 Tim 3 says, and moreover the far more relevant Scripture for women’s roles in the Church is the instruction immediately prior to 1 Tim 3 (1 Tim 2:8-15):

8 I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting; 9 in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, 10 but, which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works. 11 Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. 12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.

34 Let your[d] women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. 35 And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.

Pastor Chandler seems to be directly mocking this Scripture when he says:

Let me just share my heart for all women, married or single here at The Village Church. I don’t desire, and the elders do not desire, that you would be the type of “pat your head, bless her heart, be quiet, ask when we get home” women.

Complementarian affirmative action.

Pastor Chandler practices what he preaches. He not only has women leading in The Village Church, he has women in leadership who instruct pastors. Jen Wilkin is identified as a Minister on the church website, and wrote the article Counsel for a Complementarian Pastor explaining the need for affirmative action for women in church leadership:

3. Help them lead.

If Deborah or Huldah were a member of your church, would she have a place to exercise her gifts? We complementarians have some work to do to reclaim and celebrate the notion of women as leaders. Regrettably, many of our churches hold simultaneously a pure theology and a broken practice: We may affirm equal value and dignity with our lips, but our ministry structures tend to be far from it. And women are taking note. Seeing few or no places to serve, women with untapped gifts often conclude they must change their theology to be able to serve meaningfully in the church. We don’t want our female leaders to leave. We want them to find their places in leadership with us, but how?

We must actively help them. Leaders rarely develop in a vacuum; most can point to a senior leader who advocated for them. Pastor, what gifted and able women in your church need your guidance and advocacy? Be proactive about identifying and empowering women to lead. Pursue them to serve, and then lend them credibility by publicly celebrating their gifts. Evaluate and, if necessary, adapt your ministry structures and hiring practices to ensure they reflect your belief in the vital contributions of women.

Because women are typically primary caregivers, ministry to women is a “ministry of more-than-halfway.” It requires us to think not just in terms of, “What discipleship opportunities can we make available?” but to meet women more than halfway by asking, “How can we remove as many participation barriers as possible?”

*You can see Pastor Patrick discussing chivalry with fellow TGC Council Member John Piper here.

A 95% of Modern Women wouldn’t know their “gifts” if it hit them across the head with a 2×4.

My go-to basic test with Christian Women is to look for “kindness”. (We’ll save any other traits for other discussions.) If they can get that, they’ll probably save their soul. Even in the better churches, it’s far more rare than we want to think.

At the deeper parts of the Christian faith, a Christian should be able to operate among different sub-cultural sets with great skill. If a Christian knows multiple languages, they should be able to operate within multiple cultures, functionally being able to “take off” their native culture when needed. This is part of the power of the Spirit within. But nothing we can do will change whether we’re Jew or Greek to begin with.

What Chandler et al are pushing is a deep perversion. Which isn’t surprising: they are the World. They just can’t stand it.

Honestly, I am a member of an Acts 29 Church and it is EXTREMELY strict — I would say that the majority of the women in our church feel like second class citizens because of the restrictions — which I completely agree with Biblically. Leadership is not moveable in this.

Women are absolutely never allowed to take authority or teach over a man… and the atmosphere is such that even if women have a problem with that they know better than to do little more than murmur about it once or twice a year.

For a while even when some of the women tried to get together to do a Bible study for other women, it was not backed by the church. Now things are shifting a bit so that there are sanctioned small groups for women.

I do appreciate though that it’s just a feminist delusion that women are second class citizens in our church — the whole encourage women in their gifts thing? At least as far as it plays out in our church, it’s never – hear, run and take authority over men. It’s first — are you being submissive in your husband in this and what does he think? And then if a woman shows signs that she’s got a gift in hospitality, or service, or art or music or evangelism, the leaders will notice her and encourage her in that calling. Because women are given spiritual gifts and roles in the body by the Holy Spirit just as much as men are — just that there are some roles that are strictly off limits.

The radically diverse thing? That hurts to see. Because I have seen that play out badly, with people from other cultures brought in to check a box and be left to orbit the group as outsiders because of cultural barriers. I have suspected that of being ideology over human need, and now I know it’s true.

“Understand that there is no such thing as being wholly or purely apolitical. You can be apolitical about some things, but not all things. You may not care about the vast majority of political issues or, subscribe to any particular ideology or philosophy, but a person is apolitical insofar as what they care about, what they want, isn’t involved in a political discussion or affected by a political decision.

Tell me what an “apolitical” person is passionate about or cares about, and I will tell you just how political an animal they really are.”

Acts 29 wants the church to be a “become a radically diverse crowd” which is a distinctly political position. The underlying political ideology is that if and when the true Gospel is preached, diversity is the result. Yet is that what Scripture itself teaches? The Gospel is open to everyone to accept, but does that mean everyone will accept it equally? Where in the Bible does it teach that “diversity” as defined by SJWs is an essential part of the Church?

This means they will dilute the Gospel anytime it’s necessary to pursue this higher political goal, as they already have.

Trying to remain apolitical also causes the actual Church to dilute Scripture in order to avoid adopting a de facto political belief. They don’t have to be nor should they be proactive in the political process, but it is inane to think they cannot take a political stance. In the time of Rome not worshipping the emperor was a political stance. Believing God is above the state is a political position. Believing you, and not the state, have the authority to raise your children is a political position. Believing the state does not have the legitimate authority to break up a marriage against a man’s will is a political position.

Honestly, I am a member of an Acts 29 Church and it is EXTREMELY strict — I would say that the majority of the women in our church feel like second class citizens because of the restrictions — which I completely agree with Biblically. Leadership is not moveable in this.

Women are absolutely never allowed to take authority or teach over a man…

Good to hear. Obviously the head pastor of your church is the one setting the policy here. What we can see however is the president of Acts 29 pushing a very different teaching. This is as I wrote what entryists do. They get into organizations and start to push to change them according to their own agenda.

Of course not, but no one in Chandler’s congregation knows that, nor cares to know that. As long as their Dear Leader continues to disgorge taste, sweet, pre-digested pseudo-scriptural pablum into their eagerly awaiting maws there’s no need to go to the source and get fresh spiritual food for themselves – which they would refuse anyway, just like a spoiled child used to gorging on fast food and junk food would refuse to be served a healthy, balanced meal.

Once again, I wish these people would drop the insulting pretense of being Bible-based Christians, do a Jim Jones, and form their own gyno and ethno-centric cult. It would at least be the honest thing to do.

I’ve never heard it called “radical diversity” but the churches that I attended in the 80s and 90s were pulling out all the stops to develop “Hispanic ministries” even though the churches were ill-equipped to perform this task compared to other local churches. (Other churches were closer to the areas that the Hispanics were moving to and many of these other churches already had ministers who spoke fluent or at least pretty good Spanish.) It was easy to see that it was all about the numbers. If you give away food and clothes and disposable diapers and baby formula, you will have a Hispanic ministry in no time flat and thereby turn your Frozen Chosen church into a dynamic, fast growing “congregation.” (Actually, two congregations, but nobody will ever admit to that.)

When a church gets big enough, and has a big enough staff, the senior pastor can offload a lot of time-consuming grunt work like hospital visits onto junior members of staff and focus his own efforts on development and growth efforts and interfaith ventures with his counterparts at various other churches around town. Many pastors would greatly prefer to be professional do-gooders and committee chairman, and the best way to manage this is to have the church grow by leaps and bounds.

Do the Acts 29 churches ever ex-communicate anybody? The churches that actually do ex-communicate members usually try hard to follow Biblical principles as well as they can, otherwise booting somebody looks like a personal vendetta. Ex-communicating congregants also shows that the church hasn’t put church growth above all other values.

IF you preadh the gospel and are faithful people will come to worship. Diversity will happen. Grew up in such: managing the issues were a challenge for my old man (senior elder in a chirch which was 1/3 polynesian), because people are tribal.

Putting anything, such as diversity, or social justice, or political action, before the gospel is a deep error.

And it will end in tears for the Acts 29 movement ans they become another, failed, example of the Unitarian convergence.

I think women should develop their gifts also. Particularly the gifts stated in the scriptures for women. Her gifts of: loving her husband and letting her breast satisfy him at all times so much so that he is intoxicated with how phenomenal she is in bed, her keeping of the home including housework like dishes, sammiches, cleaning, child rearing, caring for the saints, her gifts of character including meekness, submission to her husband, low anxiety, gratitude, self-control, humility, control of her tongue and contributions to the household economy.

@Pedat Ebediyah looks like they have a loooong way to go to fulfill that diversity requirement😉

The whole thing I hear in my church is: When outsiders come and look at us, and see how mismatched and inexplicable we are as a crowd and then see how we love each other and how coherent our community is, the only explanation they’ll be able to come to is that it’s Jesus Magic and they’ll believe. It’s in many ways a large scale attempt at “lifestyle evangelism”.

From a multi-racial or multi-political standpoint it works and it is beautiful. When it comes to mixing different *cultures*? It’s like Babel all over again. Lots of people getting hurt, left out and under-served, and the culture becomes fragmented.

@DalrockOver the last few months, the elders and other leaders at The Journey have been encouraging our church and the wider community to let their guard down and step into hard conversations about justice, privilege, and race.

Funnily enough, Darrin Patrick doesn’t always sound like this. Earlier in the same year as when he cut this video, he also preached a sermon taken from his then newly-published book on manhood, and back then he had a . . . shall we say, different way of addressing those who find themselves wanting what someone else has:

“We’re envious of the coworker who gets the promotion, the neighbor who has the nicer house, the friend who has the kinder wife. We might not actually say we envy, we might not actually even articulate it verbally in any way. It may all be inside of us, but there’s three words that reveal our envy. Those three words are ‘Must be nice’. You ever done that, must be nice? ‘Must be nice to live in that kind of neighborhood or house. That must be nice.’ ‘Must be nice to have wealthy parents. That must be nice.’ ‘Must be nice to have grown up in a Christian family. That must be nice.’ ‘Must be nice to have easy kids that sleep all night. That must be nice.’ ‘Must be nice to have a fast metabolism. I mean I wish I could be in shape like that. That must be nice.’ See, envy hides in all these little phrases that we say where we are really wishing and really believing that we deserve what someone else has.

. . . A great question for all of you men to ask is, ‘Where is envy hiding in my life?’ ‘Where am I saying ‘Must be nice’?’ If you follow your envy, you’re probably going to find your temptation. If you follow your envy, you’re going to find your temptation. Envy reveals the fuel and power of what’s tempting us many times.”

So if I’m understanding this right — envy, covetousness, and desiring what someone else has are all bad, and we should avoid them. Unless you happen to be in a group that we can deem as some sort of victim of societal oppression. Because then it’s time for the church to join you in your righteous anger as you call for the other party to “surrender their privilege” and turn over their ill-gotten gains so that you can have your turn enjoying them.

Or maybe it’s just that Pastor Patrick is a hypocrite who will adhere to his Bible only as closely as his times and his culture will let him.

Pedat Ebediyah @ 1:30 pm:
“Found an Acts29 Church in my City. They must be new. Leadership family portraits…”

Do these leadership pictures strike anybody else as odd? All very casual dress, almost every man showing his wife and kids in addition to himself. Assuming I had a family, my professional bio picture would still be just me. My wife’s bio picture would be just her. Something tells me this isn’t the church that will start the pushback against rampant female entitlement.

Heartiste’s “Spot the Beta” posts are my favorites on his site. It makes sense that the way a man dresses and carries himself will indicate his beliefs. You can’t judge a book by its cover *because the book didn’t choose it*.

You know what’s radically diverse? When I go to my Catholic church for services, and kneel down next to other faithful people. There are some Korean immigrants, some Fillipinos, whites whose families hail from all over Europe, and some African Americans.

The skin color doesn’t make us diverse. Holding onto our faith in the face of a world that has set itself against our Lord makes us diverse, radically diverse in fact. I don’t think He worries about diversity, except to the extent that we become the “salt of the Earth.”

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor Greek, all are one in Christ.” Apparently that means that we need to encourage Blacks to throw tantrums when when a White officer defends himself from a murderous Black thug. But something about the way they burn down their own neighborhoods and kill and rob makes me think that the BLM types are not in Christ.

Dalrock says: “What we can see however is the president of Acts 29 pushing a very different teaching. This is as I wrote what entryists do. They get into organizations and start to push to change them according to their own agenda.”

Note that SJWs always seek to place themselves into the hierarchy at a level where they can execute the takeover as a series of gradual, top-down policy initiatives pushed by the national organization. Local groups are generally left with no options but capitulation or secession and fragmentation. Compare Neuhaus’ Law: Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.

Gunner Q says: “Do these leadership pictures strike anybody else as odd? All very casual dress, almost every man showing his wife and kids in addition to himself.”

In every other environment, absolutely. But in most so-called nondenominational churches (i.e. Baptists theologically, but avoiding the label), it is a job requirement for a man to be married, and for his wife to accept some pseudo-pastoral role as well, intended to show the wimminz that despite all that Bible stuff even a pastor’s wife is Strong & Independent, not “some little woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette”.

Faithfully following what God says will yield more racial, national and linguistic diversity than the wildest dreams of any SJW. The trouble is that comes from following God’s words and not the SJWs’.

Revelation 7: 9-12,
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from EVERY nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.'”

I’ve long said that multiculturalism is a heretical secular version of the unity of the church. You’ll note that the Bible never calls people outside the church to the kind of unity we are called to inside of it. You’ll also note that so much ink was devoted to unity in the New Testament because it’s a massive challenge, even among those who have already made a common pledge to place first the lordship of Christ and even there only possibly at a partial level due to the power of the Holy Spirit.

Beyond which, multiculturalism extended outside the church is yet another attempt to immanentize the eschaton. Why would we believe that through our own efforts and short of Christ’s return we could reverse God’s own curse at the Tower of Babel?

I follow a few of these prominent Christians on social media and read a bit of the Christian press. It’s very obvious that this generation has taken the exact opposite approach to that of the old Moral Majority era evangelicals. Rather than a war against secular culture, they are not just surrendering to secular culture, but they can’t wave their flag high enough about all the ways they actively affirm it (and de facto endorse its moral superiority over the church, as evidenced by their adoption of terms like “privilege” from the secular world as church terms). It looks to me like especially the big city church crowd is desperate to avoid getting their club membership revoked in secular society, so they take great pains to align with it wherever they can justify it biblically.

Just as one example, I see lots of tweets about refugees, black lives matter, etc. But none about homosexuality. This from people who would appear to style themselves as conservative and orthodox. I don’t think people have to go out of their way to mention things that will provoke a fight. But if you want to avoid those kinds of topics, then you shouldn’t be waving a flag high and proud about things like refugees that will earn you secular status points. It’s a form of active deception in my view. They are crafting their statements to lead people to draw conclusions about their theological beliefs that aren’t actually true without actually coming right out and lying about it.

The Bible calls us to live in peace with other men. Racial diversity creates conflict, not peace. If Christians truly wanted peace and harmony then they would be calling for the ancient boundaries to be respected, not broken down. Our forefathers were wiser than us.

It is interesting to me that “radicallly diverse” generally means “look different but with the same politics”.

Since SJW’s operate from the top down, generally by coopting key gatekeeper functions, I expect that we’ll see some “training sessions” for church leaders in the next year or so, where political interpretations of the Bible will be put out as the new norm. Some churches will leave this group as a result, some individuals will leave other churches, and the entire network will likely become more political.

SJW’s are never content to co-opt just part of an organization. Ask Twitter…

Thank you Dalrock for bringing that TGC piece to light. I read the blog since my pastor blogs there, and when that Ferguson one came out and similar ones, I got disheartened. I can’t figure out why my church is so afraid of pointing out sins tied to the modern black christian culture or the girl power culture but never give me an inch. Part of it we don’t explore but I see it, the guys at my church can respond well if the woman has an identifiable problem like drugs or booze but the everyday rebelliousness that the bible is full of is too hard to deal with and too common to take notice of. Likewise, the guys have so much energy spent with sports. I’m going astray with the sports comment but I see it as a care that chokes the word (I’m fit, thank God, and plenty familiar with fandom myself,) and makes it easier to ignore the heavy lifting that is done by brothers like Dalrock.

Because women are typically primary caregivers, ministry to women is a “ministry of more-than-halfway.” It requires us to think not just in terms of, “What discipleship opportunities can we make available?” but to meet women more than halfway by asking, “How can we remove as many participation barriers as possible?”

And what this snake is really saying is we need to get married women away from their husbands and children and keep single women from getting married and having children. They literally want to wore out the women and collect the pimps portion in tithes while the women get nothing but feelgoods. This is evil.

“My third hope for Acts 29 is that we might boldly and unapologetically become a radically diverse crowd over the next few years.”

Last church I saw did this they never meant racially , though they did some token things. They meant going against the Bible. They voted women into leadership. Who voted to allow homosexuality, people living together and pastors who had committed adultery and we’re divorced and remarried. This was the diversity they got.

Everything wrong with the modern ‘church’ in one sentence. There’s really only one participation barrier, and that would be locked doors. The rest of the so-called ‘barriers’ is racing to the lowest common denominator of morality.

I’m not interested in going to church to hear that I’m perfect, but rather to consider the ways in which I might redeem my imperfections. ‘You are perfect just the way you are’ is a lie, and we all know who the father of lies is.

Someone mentioned Unitarian. THAT the way it’s all headed? I tried one of those back in the 90s, looking for a place to land after my divorce when I had my daughter. It didn’t have a proper feel to it at all, no mention of Christ or notions of higher authority. Thinking back, I imagine the women held all the cards there. Fairfax, Va. Unitarian Universalist Church, something like that.. Not like a church at all, very humanist. They even did a skit with the kids where they did different scenarios where it is ok to tell a lie. I grabbed my daughter by the hand, cleared out, never went back. Environments like that, the family guys, the men, they had no balls in the church, headship? Neeeever heard of it, I’m sure.

Anonymous Reader says: February 26, 2016 at 5:56 pm
It is interesting to me that “radicallly diverse” generally means “look different but with the same politics”.

Fascist: /fa-ˈshist/ – [n.] Someone who insists, to the point of subversion, deceit and violence, that everyone else must have attitudes, beliefs & behaviors identical to theirs, for the sake of uniformity.
SJW: /ˈes-ˈjā-ˈdə-bəl-ˈyü/ – [n.] Someone who insists, to the point of subversion, deceit and violence, that everyone else must have attitudes, beliefs & behaviors identical to theirs, for the sake of diversity.

In regards to the SJW, below is an example of it in it’s full feminized glory. This is an excerpt from a newsletter from our retired pastor. The pastor didn’t write this but a guest writer, a young woman who attended Urbana 15 wrote it. Her purpose of writing was only to explain whether the conference was worth it or not anymore – look where she ended up! This is similar to the theme of each month’s newsletter. We’ll have to grapple with the fact that a good church like I’m at (I’m leaving it unnamed on purpose) misses out on the FI and SJW battle (actually they join the SJW on race) because for better or worse preach expositionally each week and purposefully remain silent on the issues, trying to lead by example. Anyhow, if you read this excerpt and aren’t protestant, then it will give you a good flavor of the comment section at a website like TGC, or of the common coffee talk in a conservative church.

“For me this was the first time in a large North American Evangelical context when the “sound” of influencing voices was predominately non-white and non-privileged. The conversation was different. The experience was different. It felt more home-like and more Christ-like to me. And this was illustrated particularly the evening when Black Lives Matter was featured. That evening inspired me the most, and that evening also created the most dissonance for people of privilege. Because of that evening – despite all the fruit of Urbana – some donors removed their support, and InterVarsity found they had to defend their choice to feature Black Lives Matter even on national television.

Prophetic, Courageous Engagement with Real Life – During the Black Lives Matter evening, Michelle Higgins, an activist and [worship] pastor from Ferguson [St. Louis], Missouri, spoke. That evening the worship team featured Black spirituals and wore t-shirts with “Black Lives Matter” written on them. The Black students and staff, and the vast majority of all those in attendance were ecstatic. It was a wonderful evening. It felt holy and honest. Finally, the real lived experience of black men and women was acknowledged, and a prophet at the front was challenging us to hold the black life with as much honor and dignity as the white life. From the front Urbana confessed that the black experience is not the same as the white experience. We were called to repentance in Christ.

Featuring Black Lives Matter at a major public Evangelical event such as Urbana was incredibly risky. To have the privilege of white “majority” being a voice, and not the voice, I think aligned Urbana with the mission and spirit of Jesus Christ. I realize that Black Lives Matter is a messy movement for Evangelicals. All movements are messy. Jesus’ movement was messy with people who used his words and momentum for their own agendas. But as long as committed and submitted spiritual leaders like Michelle Higgins are engaged, then there is something I need to pay attention to as a person of privilege.”

I am a Sovereign Grace Ministry member, which is basically synonymous with TGC, and I am disturbed to see this happening. Down here on the ground, things are pretty well, and feminism is trash talked by women in my church and other SGM churches I’ve been to. We don’t do the man up father’s day talks, we don’t sugar coat women’s sins. I hope it stays that way. Keller has been a concern, and now apparently I need to keep my eye on Chandler too.

And they highlighted how fatherlessness led to Michael Brown’s criminality, right? Surely they explained how Brown’s mother abandoned him with his grandmother, right? Surely they discussed how being abandoned by ones parents – even to be raised by a grandmother – and having no father figure can fill a young man with rage. And of course they explained how that contributes to high rates of criminality among blacks, especially black men.

Obviously they connected the dots and talked about how so many young black men meet Brown’s fate precisely because they behave like Brown because they were raised like Brown.

I thought about visiting a new church this morning, and guess whose books were the focus of some of the weekly meetings. I had no idea this guy’s teachings were so pervasive. I’d never heard of Chandler until I read about him on this blog, but I guess like a new word, I’ll probably be hearing his name over and over. In fact, I also first heard of Tim Keller on this blog not too long ago, and then I don’t think it was a month later that I was hearing about him somewhere else.

In thinking about the SJW’s and how they have in the church – taken over with the shroud of ‘it says it in the Bible’ around them – I am drawn to the story in the Bible – one that we all know – of Jesus and the woman at the well.

In this interaction, Jesus displayed grace and kindness along with an unwavering sense of ‘calling the woman out’ because of her lifestyle. There was no wiggle-room in how He reacted to that part of her life. He did not wrap it, or interpret it in a ‘socially acceptable manner’; he did not excuse her because of her ‘situation’ or upbringing, or (smile) because one of her former husbands nor the man with whom she was currently living, did not lift her up, or encourage her, or teach her to be a leader. Jesus simply told her and made it clear that her life was one of sin – though again, in a graceful, kind and loving way.

The Chandler’s and the Keller’s and the Laurie’s are speaking to women anyways in a graceful, kind and loving way – but have ‘flipped it’. They are wrapping the SJW message in selected Bible verses – to strengthen their position or point – and then come back with ‘but it says it in the Bible’.

One personal example for me was when once talking with my ‘ex’ about ushers at church. Her position was that ‘anyone’ should be able to serve as an usher, no matter their walk, their faith, their lifestyle. Yes, her position was that if a homosexual who attended our church desired to be an usher, as being an usher is after all a fairly benign position in that you are not teaching – that ‘we’ should in the example of Jesus, welcome that person and their desire to serve. And this example of welcome-ness or inclusion could serve as the catalyst for that person to begin that relationship with Christ.

When I pointed out that the Bible instructs against this lifestyle and that if the church allowed an openly homosexual person to serve, that ‘the optics’ might be, that the church is condoning that lifestyle. She then, immediately threw the ‘where is the grace of Jesus in that ?’.

Congratulations ‘ex’ – you just masterfully changed the subject and defensively wrapped your position around the Bible. Pick up your SJW membership card at the table by the front door on the way out of church this morning. You’ll know the table by the pictures of Chandler, Keller, Meyer, Moore and Karol Ladd’s ‘Positive Woman Connection’ sign-up.

>When I pointed out that the Bible instructs against this lifestyle and that if the church allowed an openly homosexual person to serve, that ‘the optics’ might be, that the church is condoning that lifestyle. She then, immediately threw the ‘where is the grace of Jesus in that ?’.

1 Corinthians 8:10-13.
>For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

If “bad optics” causes someone to think that something that is forbidden is permitted because they misunderstood what was actually going on, then the person who confused them in that way has sinned against them.

Pay no attention to the Vatican, all good there too….
“Pope Francis’s secretary, 34-year-old Miriam Wuolou of Eritrea, was found dead earlier this week — and the Vatican is calling foul.

Wuolou’s body was discovered in her Rome apartment by police after her brother raised concern that she wasn’t answering her phone. She was seven months pregnant and suffered from diabetes, which can prove dangerous — even fatal — during pregnancy.

The Vatican, however, has called for an investigation into the woman’s death. Police have interviewed her brother, her ex-husband and her most recent boyfriend, who is believed to be a policeman employed by the Vatican, the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reports.

A little leaven leavenath the whole lump. The clergy/laity divide was implemented to do specifically this.

When Jesus told His disciples to beware the teaching of the Pharisees this is a large aspect of what He was talking about. The first layer of this is the credentialing (gate keeping) process wherein one becomes clergy.

We’re supposed to have the Holy Spirit (that we have no need for men to teach us) and what we have instead are colleges teaching against the Body and the mission of Christ.

I first thought, “that’s gotta be a little overblown”. Nope, checks out. The Vatican, a sovereign nation, is quite capable of hiring & firing whoever. And even they can’t enforce their own standards.

Well, a legitimate question to ask is what “standards” do they have now under the reign of Pope Marx I? More and more, it would appear that they’re the standards of secular Social Justice Warfare rather than Scripture and centuries of church tradition.

Like: “Philippians 3:8 KJV
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,”?

Yes. We are all one in Christ but even in the NT that didn’t stop God giving sex-specific commands or Paul pointing out how Cretans had exceptionally poor behavior. Churchian efforts to erase any acknowledgement of differences between men and women are only the most obvious example of how “unity in Christ” can be pushed to anti-Christian extremes.

I cannot believe God wants us to erase racial distinctions when He divided His own people into tribes.

A generation ago, recalling his time at Cornell University, Allan Bloom offered this, “a few students discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.”. That’s our clergy.